The HIMSS mHealth Roadmap - an Overview

February 04, 2015

The HIMSS mHealth Roadmap is an easy-to-use resource that shares best practices for implementing mobile and mHealth strategies, designed to provide guidance to hospitals and healthcare providers which are looking to adopt and deploy mobile technologies.

Topics addressed in the document include:

New care models (including consumer engagement);

Policy;

Privacy and security;

Return-on-investment and payment;

Standards and interoperability; and

Technology (infrastructure, standards and interoperability).

Each section of the roadmap provides a brief background of the topic, the current state of adoption, and potential future improvements. In addition, the document discusses the interrelationship between many sections. For example, there is a need to leverage and create standards which enable the development of new models of care.

The Roadmap has been seen as an instrumental resource as part of mHealth development strategies, reflected in multiple blog postings, which can be seen in the following excerpts:

“I have been a longtime innovator and early adopter for things in my medical practice… So when I discovered the movement within HIMSS following mobile, and considering mobile as the ultimate tech to deliver transformative change in healthcare, I wanted to follow up and see where the organization was with regard to recommendations and implementation of mHealth as a whole. This is why I downloaded the HIMSS mHealth Roadmap.”

“I downloaded the 2013 Roadmap to help myself and my technology partners in our efforts to develop effective mHealth solutions. I have found it extremely useful in that it provides good guidance toward addressing the huge privacy/security issues of mobile health. This part of the Roadmap is critical, as we negotiate with hospital administrators regarding the HIPAA and HITECH Act implications of proposed mHeatlh solutions.”

“The mobile health application space is literally evolving and taking shape before our eyes and with that much change occurring that quickly it can be difficult to get your bearings and know where to start. What is needed now is the right strategy, the right framework. That’s what makes the HIMSS mHealth Roadmap model so interesting.”

This resource was developed with contributions from many subject matter experts representing various stakeholders within the mHealth ecosystem. The Roadmap is a living document and will reflect regular updates to capture new industry developments.

If you have suggested updates, or if you would like to volunteer as part of the mHealth Community Roadmap Task Force, please contact us at mHealth@HIMSS.org.